Back Up Off Me

For the past few years, I’ve volunteered to have students from my Alma mater interview me to ask me questions about what life is like post-graduation. Almost always the same question comes up.

“What’s it like to be a young woman in the business world?”

Usually I tell them my success story. It’s great, I’ve held four positions in the past four years, have made a significant increase in salary, I feel challenged and fulfilled by job, etc. And I’m not lying when I say those things.

But other times, it really fucking sucks.

It sucks to have a partner in your position who thinks he’s superior to you, as well as having the majority of the people in the building think they’re more knowledgable than you because they’re older.

It sucks to have the creepy man upstairs stare you down like a piece of meat and have all the men yell at the morning meeting that it looks like you’re going to a club the day you wear your brand new leather pencil skirt (it’s a great skirt though).

It sucks to have people that you are responsible for financially call you “princess” and to be asked if you’ll get to “step up into” your partner’s position, despite you and him being at the same level all this time.

It sucks having every piece of work you do scrutinized, but when you get upset at a failure you’re told that you care too much and are too emotionally involved.

And after a long hard work of putting all of your effort into a project, and dealing with all the bullshit, you’re just tired. That’s what it’s like to be a young, female in business. It’s exhausting and deflating, and hard work.